The invention relates to a marine current power installation. In particular, the invention involves not just a tidal power installation which makes use of the energy of tidal ebb and flow, but a power installation which takes energy from marine currents which constantly occur over all oceans.
Marine currents are usually large-area stationary current systems, the production of which can be decisively attributed to the thrust force of the wind at the surface of the sea (drift current), internal pressure forces (gradient current) and the rotation of the Earth (Coriolis force) and the topography of the ocean bottom and the coasts. The most important marine currents may be mentioned made by way of example, including the North and South Equatorial Currents, the Kuroshio, the East Australian Current, the Gulf Stream, the Brazil Current, the Agulhas Current, the North Pacific Current, the North Atlantic Current, the West Wind Drift, the Californian Current, the Humboldt Current, the Canary Current, the Benguela Current, the Western Australian Current, Equatorial Countercurrents, the Alaska Current, the Norwegian Current, the West Spitsbergen Current, the East Greenland Current, the Labrador Current, the Irminger Current, the Oyashio and the Falklands current. Besides the known surface currents in the oceans there are pronouncedly in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans the Equatorial Sub-currents (up to 2.5 m/sec flow speed) which at a depth of around 100 m (or deeper) flow eastwards directly onto the Equator under the westwardly directed South Equatorial Current.
The invention provides a marine current power installation which takes kinetic energy of flow from the marine current and converts the taken energy into electrical energy. In those cases in which the marine current water power installation according to the invention is used below the water level, for example more than 50 m below the water level, it can make a relatively large amount of power available even when the flow speed of the marine current is relatively low, for example in the region of 1.5 m/sec or less. That is achieved in that the water power installation has a water wheel or a rotor (turbine or propeller) which is of a large diameter, of for example 10 m or more, preferably between 30 m and 120 m in diameter.